A hotel manager in the Hilton chain has been charged with aggravated burglary and assault after he allegedly entered a hotel guest’s room without the person’s permission and sucked on the guest’s toes.
Night manager 52-year-old David Neal worked at the hotel in downtown Nashville, where the person had checked in for a stay in the town in March, Fox 8 reported. The hotel guest told police that he woke up and found the night manager sucking on his toes.
The alleged victim, Pete Brennan of Texas, told Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN that he was staying at the Hilton on “sort of a typical work trip.”
“It was almost like a dream, a sort of nightmare,” he added. “It just didn’t make sense. Why is this person touching me?”
Brennan also told Nashville NBC affiliate WSMV-TV, that he “awoke to a gentleman who had snuck into my room somehow and was sexually assaulting me. It was actually the Hilton manager [who] was the attacker.”
According to police reports, Neal had allegedly made a key card which he used to sneak into the guest’s room on March 30 at around 5 a.m. It was then that the hotel guest confronted the manager, after recognizing Neal as the same person who had responded to his room with another employee the day before because the guest was having some kind of trouble with his TV.
Officers spoke with the manager, who reportedly admitted to entering the guest room without permission but said nothing about sucking toes — and claimed he only did so after allegedly smelling smoke and going to make sure Brennan was okay.
Nashville hotel manager charged with aggravated burglary, assault after entering guest's room https://t.co/p5sbLs9VeU
— WKRN News 2 (@WKRN) May 9, 2023
Police later said the night manager never reported to security or anyone else that he had smelled smoke nor were there any other reports from anyone in the hotel about a smell of smoke, the outlet noted.
Police said on Friday, Neal was arrested at his home in Lebanon and was booked into jail. He’s being held on a $27,000 bond.
Brennan has since filed a lawsuit against the Nashville Hilton hotel with his lawyer saying that Neal’s criminal history should’ve prevented them from hiring him.
“Multiple charges of forgery, drinking and driving, a manslaughter conviction as well, which served prison time,” “Michael Fisher, one of Brennan’s lawyers, said. “When Hilton hired this person, they had to have known. They have to do background checks to know, and the fact that they would put somebody like that in a position where they have the ability to clone keys, have the ability to get into a guest’s room.”
“The safety and security of our guests and team members is our highest priority,” a representative for the Hilton Nashville Downtown hotel told WKRN in a statement. “We are working closely with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, and, as part of company policy, we do not comment on ongoing investigations.”